


From Eventide to Daybreak

by DarkTARDIS



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Baby Harry, Canonical Character Death, Disturbing Themes, Gen, Harry Potter was Raised by Other(s), Mild Description of Death/Corpses, Mild Language, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Plot Bunny, Sirius Lives, Sirius Thinks Straight for a Minute, Work Up For Adoption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-08
Updated: 2014-11-08
Packaged: 2018-02-24 09:44:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2577014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkTARDIS/pseuds/DarkTARDIS
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Sirius didn't go after Wormtail that night? What if he left before Hagrid could take Harry? What if Sirius took him instead?<br/>-~&~-<br/>I realise this kind of idea isn't exactly original; however, most stories like this don't start from the very beginning, skipping Sirius' stay in Azkaban altogether. </p><p>This is just the beginning of the story!! Not a cliffhanger, exactly, but it is very open-ended. I will probably come and finish this story eventually, but right now I just don't have it in me. PLEASE ADOPT! I would love to see your take on how it all goes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Eventide to Daybreak

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Good Life](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3812458) by [DarkTARDIS](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkTARDIS/pseuds/DarkTARDIS). 



> Remember: this won't be updated for a very, very long time. While the "end" of this plot bunny isn't exactly like a cliffhanger, it's extremely open-ended. Want to know how it goes after that point? Well... I guess you'd better to writing, eh? Or send it as a challenge to someone? ;)

The night was quiet. Few insects or birds made any sounds. There was no breeze. The night was October the 31st, year 1981. A great evil had happened that night, as had happened many other nights before throughout the passing years, and it was strong enough that nature itself could sense it.

Dark threads of unease steadily wrapped themselves around Sirius Black's heart. Something had happened; he was unsure of what, exactly, but he could feel it. Something was pressing upon his very soul, making him restless. Pacing about his flat, he worried. He felt like he was being ridiculous, worrying when there was no evidence he even had real reason to worry.

He worried about Remus, and whether he was really spying on them for Voldemort. He worried about weak Peter, and whether he would survive this war. He worried whether any of them would survive this war. He especially worried about his best mate, James Potter, James' wife, Lily, and their son, Harry. His worries went 'round and 'round, but for some reason, they focused onto them the most of all.

Unable to stay within the confines of his flat anymore, he decided he would go to Peter's home. He wasn't sure why he felt drawn to his house, rather than the Potter's, but to Peter's he went. A traitorous subconscious thought trickled through his mind... _Maybe you're afraid of what may be at the Potter's..._  Disturbed, he quickly dismissed it as absurd.

Mounting his motorbike, he started on his way to Peter's. Sirius hoped that Peter would forgive him for coming over so late; however, his hopes were fast forgotten when Peter didn't answer Sirius' knock on his door.

"Peter?" he called, knocking again. "It's me."

Still there was no answer. The uneasiness increased within him, and his heart rate began to increase as the beginnings of fear worked their way through him.

"Peter?"

Sirius tried the door, and, finding it unlocked, entered the house. What he found upon entering bothered him... The room was neat. Sirius' trained eye could easily spot there were a few items that were normally present missing: mostly some odds and ends that were charmed. It was also impossible to miss, especially for Sirius, the fancy chair that had been to one corner of the room was missing. The only sounds he heard were his own breathing and his pounding heart. His mind kept coming back to one thing: the room was neat. No room of Peter's house was ever _neat_.

"Anyone here?" he called, shutting the door behind him.

His eyes continued to scan everywhere, noticing anything out of place, and he listened hard for any signs of life in the house besides himself. He started to go through the other rooms: the kitchen, guest rooms, and bathrooms. Finding those empty, he went on to the master bedroom, Peter's bedroom, which was also empty. Beginning to get rather frantic, as the Marauder's never did anything drastic without informing the others about it, he searched the room for signs of what may have happened, ignoring that first traitorous thought that was now screaming that he should've gone to the Potter's. Adrenaline spiking through his system, he realized everything important of Peter's was gone: his muggle clothing, his robes, his wand, a locket keepsake, and a few other things.

His frantic searching now completed, his mind, well-trained to be an Auror, raced with thoughts and possibilities of what may have happened. Each possibility was worse than the last.

"…No…" he whispered.

Horror filled him at the thoughts running through his mind. It couldn't be true - there had to be a different explanation, he tried to reason with himself. The part of him that had gone to school with Peter and had been friends with him felt like he was being irrational... but the other part of his mind, the part that had training ingrained so deeply within him that there was no room for personal feelings, was winning over. Fear nearly overwhelmed him. Peter couldn't have actually...

_"No!"_

Sirius whipped around and ran out of the house, flinging and leaving the door open in his haste. He mounted his bike and tore down the road, flipping the switch to make it fly. He had to get there – fast. He wasn't going to ride on the ground this time.*

Leaning to the left, he curved the bike through the air in the direction of James' home. His heart was pounding faster and harder than ever, a conglomeration of horrid thoughts and feelings coursing through him, causing his adrenaline levels to reach new heights.

 _Please, please, please be there_ , he thought.

Then he saw it.

_No, no, no!_

Approaching fast from high above the ground, he easily spotted smoke and the unmistakable flickering light of fire in the darkness, around the same general area of his dear friends' and precious godson's home.

Drawing closer still, he could also clearly see exactly where it originated.

"No!" he cried out in anguish. It was too much, and the more logical, trained part of his mind was finally pushed back, and he barely registered the strange lack of the Dark Mark floating above what was an obvious attack.

It was obvious – that smoke and those flames came from James and Lily's home. Sirius hadn't thought it possible for him to grow more afraid, but he did. James. Lily. _Harry_. He pressed harder in on the petrol, attempting to make the bike go faster when it was already flying at the max.

Sloping the bike into a dive, he curved to the right to land on the street in front of the house, which looked to have the entirety of the back left corner of the second story and the upper half of the first story just under it completely blown away, and there were small flames licking along the edges of the rubble.

Sirius ditched the bike quickly, his wand out, but tears of grief were already streaming down his face. He knew there was little hope of finding anyone alive. He could already tell there was too little noise coming from the house; Voldemort and his Death Eaters were long gone, and they would never leave any survivors. He ran towards the door, which was blown off its hinges. The location of where the explosion had apparently occurred was horrifying, because he knew... that was Harry's bedroom. His _godson's_ bedroom. Sirius sprinted through the living room and turned to go up the stairs, but suddenly froze in horror and grief.

"James..."

James, his best mate, was collapsed on the stairs. His wand was held loosely in hand, his eyes were still open, and an expression that was a mixture of ferocity and despair was forever frozen to his face. There was clearly no life to his blank gaze. There was no mistaking what had killed him - there was only ever one curse that took a life in such a way.

"Oh, Prongs..."

Sirius swallowed down his grief, and forced himself to use every piece of Auror training he had to push most of his grief to the side. He had to keep going. His breath came in shuddering, half-suppressed sobs, and he had just run up the stairs around his friend's body when he heard it.

A child was crying. It was muffled, but unmistakable.

He froze at the landing for the barest moment.

"…Harry!"

Taking off again, he ran down the hallway, and, stopping momentarily at the doorway, he saw Lily just lying there at the base of Harry's crib, and his barely suppressed anguish rolled through him again. Tearing his eyes away from her, he quickly crossed what was left of the room to where Harry was still crying, clinging his blanket to his face in his crib.

More sobs escaped Sirius, but they were no longer simply grief-filled, but also full of amazed relief. He gave Harry a quick diagnosis with his wand, and found that he was in perfect health outside of a small, fairly insignificant fresh laceration on his forehead. A faint Dark magic residue clung to him, but there was no traces of a Dark  _spell_ having touched him.

His shocked relief grew to new proportions. Harry was okay... He was _okay_! Sirius didn't understand it; he didn't understand it all. It made no sense. _James_ was dead, _Lily_ was dead, there were no Death Eaters or Voldemort to be seen, but _Harry was alive_ , and seemingly _untouched_. There wasn't any Dark spell that would've given Harry a scratch like that; he must've banged his head on something.

Harry had apparently heard him standing there, because he buried his face further into his blanket and started crying harder. All the breath rushed out Sirius as something else occurred to him: _By the gods, he just watched his mother die... right in front of him._ Hands shaking, he reached out to him.

"It's alright, Harry, pup, I'm here... It's Padfoot. Come here, you're alright..." he continued whispering soothing things to him as he picked him up, reassuring him, but he didn't once tell him to stop crying. What right did Sirius have to tell him that? _Sirius_ was crying. Harry had every damned right to cry.

Even as he held Harry, turning to face Harry away from Lily, his mind didn't stop running in circles. Why wasn't Harry dead? Even more so, why was he completely untouched? He could feel the cloying, sticky feel of the evil of extremely Dark magic in the room. It was likely from the Killing Curse which killed Lily. Wasn't Harry supposed to have been the target? Wasn't the prophecy supposed to be about him? Why would they leave him? Then something he'd noticed at the beginning finally registered. There was no Dark Mark above the house... They'd been interrupted.

Panic clawed at him mildly for a moment, and he ran back out of the room, Harry in his arms, through the hallway, back down the stairs, and painfully side-stepped again around his friend's body. Wild thoughts coursed through him. _They might come back. I have to leave. The Apparition wards are still up... I need to get Harry safe._ Then he stopped suddenly, back in the living room before the door. _But that doesn't make sense... They shouldn't have left in the first place. In fact, it only makes sense if Voldemort himself had come to get him, and he wouldn't have left him alive after--_

He stopped breathing. Harsh reality crashed back into his mind, and he remembered why he'd come in the first place. What would've had to happen for Voldemort to _know_ this location in the _first_ place.

_**Wormtail.** _

His emotions changed, from deep anguish to mixed with the darkest rage. It was _Peter_. Peter had _betrayed_ them. He had betrayed them _all_. The spy hadn't been Remus; of course, the _werewolf_ , a _Dark creature_ , hadn't been the one betraying them all this time. It had been Peter - weaker, snivelling Peter. The only way anyone - in this case, Voldemort - could know about the location of the Potter's was if Peter, who was the Secret Keeper, had told them; the Fidelius Charm prevented anything else.

 _A rat, of bloody course he's a rat, that **traitor**! I'll get him - I'll kill him! I'm going to bloody kill him for what he did..._  His thoughts continued on this vein for a few seconds, before Harry's sound of distress snapped Sirius out of his enraged, murderous thoughts and he realised he'd tightened his arms around Harry a bit too tight. It was also clear from the way Harry was looking at him that he could see something was wrong by the way Sirius was acting, though he still didn't fully understand what had happened nor what was going on. Harry had been somewhat calmer, being in the arms of someone familiar, but Sirius' stillness, distress and lack of comforting words for the past minute had stirred him up a bit again.

Sirius immediately loosened his hold a bit on Harry, whispering a quiet apology and continued with his words of comfort. Sirius closed his eyes and pulled him, gently, close to his chest. He was again reminded of how strange and lucky he was to be holding his beloved godson alive and well in his arms. This reminder made him think.

 _I have to take care of him. I'm his godfather - I'm all he's got left. No one else can take him; the blasted Ministry would never agree to Remus taking him._ Sirius could still feel the black, instant hatred of his once dear friend. It was of course mixed with a confusion of why, _why_ would Peter do this to them, and more than that: why would he give up _Harry_ , an innocent and defenseless _child_. But Sirius had an absolute certainty that _no_ excuse was good enough, and _nothing_ he might ever possibly say in attempt to defend himself would redeem him, nor would Sirius ever forgive him for what he did. Even though his rage still burned against Wormtail, he couldn't even fathom setting the child in his arms down for a single moment.

He would **not** let anyone touch Harry. He would take him, raise him the way James and Lily wanted him to do in the event of their death. It was too risky to try and go after Wormtail. He might not come back, and then who would take care of his godson? There was no one to leave him with while he tracked down Pettigrew, and no guarantee that Sirius would come back.

No, he couldn't risk it.

All the while these thoughts scrambled through his mind, and all through his rage at Peter, there was also a burning guilt and hatred that he directed towards himself. It had been his idea. If he hadn't suggested it, if he had just been the Secret Keeper himself like they'd planned, James and Lily would still be alive. Even if Sirius had been captured, he would have _never_ revealed their location. There was also some doubt. If he couldn't accurately tell who could be trusted and who couldn't - Remus versus Peter - then how could he possibly take care of Harry?

But he had no choice. There was no one else. There were only two people he would have trusted enough to be _able_ to protect Harry the way he needed, and those two people were Remus and Dumbledore. However, Remus couldn't because of the Ministry, and he probably wouldn't have agreed to it anyway because he wouldn't think it was safe. He'd probably be right, but Sirius never liked to think about how dangerous Remus _could_ be. Dumbledore, well, he was a great man and headmaster, but not really one to take care of children on a daily basis, and he unfortunately did tend to have a "big picture" mindset. He might have trusted Dumbledore to be able to  _protect_ Harry, but not to  _take care_ of him the way he would need.

He could hardly think straight. Too much had happened all at once, and too many things needed to be thought about and addressed. He stood in the house of his best mate, with said best mate's and mate's wife's lifeless corpses just steps behind him. His godson was distraught in arms. The front door was hardly a metre in front of him, nearly flat against the floor.

He needed to leave. Strange disappearance or not, he couldn't risk any Death Eaters to the house, and there was sure to be little time before Dumbledore showed up.

Sirius exited the house, pausing just a few metres outside the door, and looked back. A single tear escaped his eyes, Sirius thinking of what - who - lay inside. He knew that of all the things he had seen in the war, this was one event that he would never forget.

"Rest in peace, my friend. I will not let _any_ harm come to the one you sacrificed everything to protect. I swear it."

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, he slowly turned back. Then, looking up, he froze.

"...Sirius?" It was Rubeus Hagrid. He stood just a ways by the bike, broom in hand. "Is... is tha' 'Arry? Is 'e alright? Wha' happened? Are James 'n Lily alright?" he questioned quickly, earnestly, looking up in fierce desperation towards the ruined house. He started to move closer, but Sirius took a small, quick step back. It was a testimony to how distraught he still was, that he hadn't heard someone as large as Hagrid land a broom.

"I -" Sirius' voice caught, so he cleared his throat. "I'm... I'm sorry, Hagrid." He looked at Hagrid with regret, but determination, to Hagrid's apparent befuddlement. "Tell Dumbledore I have to do this. I have to protect him."

Hagrid deflated. "Wha' -"

"More importantly," he cut across him, "You tell him to get Pettigrew, and make sure he pays. Make sure he pays for what he -" Sirius couldn't continue. His voice failed him, and tears of grief and anger flowed down his cheeks once again. He closed his eyes against them, and buried his face against Harry, attempting to take comfort in the life that was in his arms.

"Sirius..." Hagrid's voice was broken. Unknown to Sirius, Hagrid again looked at the house, his own pain of loss and realisation bringing tears to his eyes.

Sirius looked up at Hagrid.

"I'm sorry," he said again, and, clutching small Harry to chest, he turned on the spot and Apparated. Appearing at his desired location**, he looked down at Harry, who had been startled by the Apparition, and had begun crying again. Sirius immediately started walking and rocking him, whispering a tired apology and comforting nothings to him. After a few minutes, Harry had calmed down,  and started to get sleepy. Sirius stared down at him, still rocking him gently. Thoughts about everything that had happened were again running through his mind. He was still in a partial state of shock over what had happened, because it had happened so quickly, with no warning at all.

It took just a minute more for Harry to fall completely asleep, though it looked restless. Sirius' eyes slipped closed. He leaned forward, kissing Harry's forehead, and pulled back again.

 _I'll take care of you, Harry, like you're my own son._ Sirius thought. Then, mentally addressing his now-passed friends, Harry's loving parents, he thought,  _I promise._

**Author's Note:**

> *It occurred to me while I was writing this that it would make more sense if he had Apparated at this point, but I wanted to keep in the canon detail of him having gone to the Potter's on his bike, as well as keep my head-canon of he first visiting Pettigrew's house.  
> **Purposefully left ambiguous to make it easier for anyone that adopts this. Though obviously you're free to change any written details I have, as well.  
> -~*~-  
> There it is, folks! Hope you enjoyed, feel free to leave constructive criticism! I'll give you a text-formed chocolate-chip cookie/biscuit!! I need to improve my writing... :)
> 
> Please forgive any "Americanisms", as I'm from the US, and any "Southerisms"(yes, I just made that up), as I'm from the South. I tried to make it as English-English as possible. xD
> 
> Again, please adopt! And do whatever you want to the story!! I don't care if it's slash or het, angsty or happy, plotless, angry, dark, light, grey, or anything else. Though I do love a good happy ending.
> 
> Also, this was originally posted on fanfiction.net under the name of TARDISbluu - yes, me - but you'll find the content of the story fairly different. I edited this version much more thoroughly, and changed quite a few details. It's certainly still recognisable, though, or at least it is to me.


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